of great consideration and consequence to vindicate our religion in
this particular. But if the thing be evidently impossible, then it is
highly unreasonable to propose it to the belief of mankind.

I know that some, more devout than wise, and who, it is to be hoped,
mean better than they understand, make nothing of impossibilities in
matters of faith, and would fain persuade us that the more impossible
anything is, for that very reason it is the fitter to be believed; and
that it is an argument of a poor and low faith to believe only things
that are possible; but a generous and heroical faith will swallow
contradictions with as much ease as reason assents to the plainest and
most evident propositions. Tertullian, in the heat of his zeal and
eloquence, upon this point of the death and resurrection of Christ,
lets fall a very odd passage, and which must have many grains of
allowance to make it tolerable: "_prosus credible est_ (saith he),
_quia ineptum est; certum est, quia impossible_--it is therefore
very credible, because it is foolish, and certain, because it is
impossible"; "and this (says he) is _necessarium dedecus fidei_," that
is, "it is necessary the Christian faith should be thus disgraced by
the belief of impossibilities and contradictions." I suppose he means
that this article of the resurrection was not in itself the less
credible because the heathen philosophers caviled at it as a thing
impossible and contradictious, and endeavored to disgrace the
Christian religion upon that account. For if he meant otherwise, that
the thing was therefore credible because it was really and in itself
foolish and impossible; this had been to recommend the Christian
religion from the absurdity of the things to be believed; which
would be a strange recommendation of any religion to the sober and
reasonable part of mankind.